Well, actually one Nokian did in 2005
http://lemody.blogspot.com/2005/11/xrandr-o-2.html
but the priorities were (and still are) set differently :-) On the other hand I doubt IT2005 or 6 would resize so nicely or even support xrandr extension in xserver so it was not easy at that time. Once I saw it (in 2005) I tried to add to kernel but kernel rotation support is only part of it, without support in xserver it is not much useful. And understanding and recompiling xserver in 2.x SDK for OS2006 was not easy, such old SDKs are missing lot of dependencies. So I put the idea to my long TODO list. 3.x SDKs (bora, OS2007) are much easier in this regard so maybe adding it to xserver in OS2007 woudn't be that hard after all. Still, OS2007 apps may not resize so nicely, they are slowly working or resolution independence for years so OS2008 is almost there but OS2007 is much older code.

FBReader supports screen rotation even with the standard OS2008 (and probably other OSes, too). For eBook reading, at least with FBReader, no need for this kernel tweak. FBReader is *great* in portrait mode.

For any wondering what works and how well, here's some stuff:

Some issues:
Wish the side buttons in hildon-input-method stuff would be proportioned to screen width... The stylus-board is just off the edge of usability. A little wider keys, and I'd be using the world's tallest xterm. I'm gonna get xkbd set up to cover the stylus-board; it'll displace whatever window, while xkbd does the work.

PDF reader "fit width" doesn't. It fits to 800px, grrrr...
eVince is cool, though, unsurprisingly.

The main menu is, ummm, broken. Doesn't know how high the screen is, and the submenus are half off the screen, which requires the d-pad to scroll through any long submenus.

Skype is a basket-case.

The control panel is broke.

See any patterns yet?

None of the camera apps I've tried are working; probably direct framebuffer rendering is confused.

Good Stuff:
GMail iPhone version (with greasemonkey) is now awesome...

The task-switcher menu is great, gets 800px high with 10 windows in it.

As mentioned before, eVince is good; in conjunction with eVince's ability to rotate images, portrait modes yield a landscape mode with portrait pages, fit to the height of the screen, and scrolling horizontally. The same eVince mode, but without the RandR, is good for scrolling 8.5x11 pages horizontally.

Gnumeric works fine; one of few apps that look at home in portrait windowed mode, though of course better in fullscreen. Portrait will be good for many spreadsheets, as mine are typically more columnar than lamellar.

Xournal is good.

VNC works perfectly; portrait mode + 1024x768 = scrolling horizontally only.

Oh, and I'm posting this with Opera on the desktop via rdp, that works too. Kind cool, if you've never seen WinXP on 480x800.

The clock app works, mostly.

File Manager actually gets by OK.


Quick question: Anyone know where I can get xrandr binary? Yeah, yeah, I'll go search now. (I need it to make powerlaunch flip screen and xmodmap d-pad, as I don't really have room for the applet and want the d-pad to work.)
Found it! from x11-xserver-utils in sid armel; I'm posting it and a little script below.

I assume that reading web pages might be also very comfortable. Man. that looks so cool I have to immediately try it out!

Do so, it's nice, easy, and has no ill effects as long as you don't rotate it. (Ill effects accompanying rotation are limited to high blood pressure caused by seeing how some (mainly corporate-developed) apps display.)

I just tested. It's freaking awesome!
Hmm... looks very interesting indeed. by the way, browser is excellent on portrait mode!

It is here, http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/kernel-2....otation.tar.gz with minimal testing. Just tried to install rest from http://sse2.net/rotate/ and rotation works. It also contains Japanese FM band patch by pycage. Otherwise it is same as the one linked from pptp IT2008 section.

EDIT: there is this bug someone mentioned, after display suspend and restore rotation is not restored properly and display is messed up, please wait for the fix

EDIT2:hopefully fixed now and re-uploaded

Here's a script to xmodmap the dpad and rotate the screen. Also included is the xrandr binary, which is a CLI for the RandR extension, and is used by the script. Install them both to executable places (I put xrandr in /usr/bin, and rotate.sh in /home/user/apps) and invoke as:EDIT: Use the script below, if you want to be able to rotate one notch clockwise or counterclockwise from current position.
EDIT: Script rezipped; now this zip contains the most recent version of the script, able to rotate one notch clockwise or counterclockwise from current position.

@Benson

Nice script but is there a mode where the script can cycle each mode on each run? Use for adding to cmd-navigator for example.

Ummm, sure, you could do that. I was thinking for powerlaunch, so:
power key -> some other key -> whichever direction you want up (on d-pad).
But, hey, why not...
It'll be here in a few minutes.